


Ars Venatori

by vasaris



Series: Liber Custodes [2]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, The Sentinel
Genre: Canon atypical sex, Canon-Typical Violence, Cthulhu Mythos, F/M, GFY, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 19:05:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8908381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vasaris/pseuds/vasaris
Summary: "You are not a cat. You do not get to leave bodies on my doorstep and call it a present."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivermoon1970](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivermoon1970/gifts), [LadyMaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMaya/gifts).



> Banner created by the amazing Ellen Sorcha.

“Are you sure you’re wantin’ to go out there, ma’am? I mean, sure, the house’s got water and electric, an’ I think they ran the cable internet out there back in the day, but the deep woods ain’t right.” The realtor _cum_ property manager lowers his voice. “It ain’t safe up there. Not for strangers.”

“The keys, Mr. Jacobs,” Maribelle says, willing herself to calmness. These days she’s supposed to think of herself as Diana Venatori, a young, wealthy dilettante with esoteric tastes. But _this_ day she just wants to get to the house her uncle left her, deed buried beneath a dozen shell corporations and ghosts.

“It’s your funeral,” he tells her. “Don’t say we didn’t warn ya.”

He pulls a set of keys from the ancient and scarred wooden rack behind him, and Maribelle takes a slow breath. He stinks of fear and avarice as he drops them into her waiting hand.

“Thank you,” she says simply. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying. It’s taking a while to settle my cousin’s estate, as you might imagine.”

“Yeah. I heard. A grand mess, the rumors that the poor girl was a Sentinel on the run.” The reek of fear eased off replaced by… something. Something Maribelle has never encountered before and it makes her uneasy. Wisps of grey-purple mist begin to dance at the corners of the room accompanied by faint, whispering snarls.

“I know that Sentinels must be trained,” Maribelle says, putting a low throb of horror in her voice, “but you’d think that the government would not go to such lengths! Using fire to flush a fugitive out of a building?”

“It’s terrible. They’re lucky that she was the only person they killed.”

The expenditure for a tub of vat-grown tissue and a handful of bones had been completely worth it. It wasn’t uncommon for the Institute to use small fires to force an active Sentinel out of a building. Instinct ran deep. Sentinels who weren’t trained by the government – which was to say utterly divorced from their emotions and instincts – were hard pressed not to respond to the most primal of threats. The logic was simple: If she was a Sentinel the smoke would drive her out early. If she wasn’t, the flames would drive her out later.

What had played in the news was the reality – Maribelle Jones was willing to die rather than turn herself over either way. For the first time in a century or more the public questioned the institute and its methods. Maribelle suppresses a smile thinking of it. Letting the Institute chase her until she’d cornered them had netted her the precise prey she’d sought.

Public doubt.

“You have to wonder,” she says, dropping her eyes to his desk. She lets the keys fall into the tiny, fancy purse she carries to compliment her needlessly overpriced pantsuit and fashionably cropped-and-dyed hair. “How many non-sentinels they’ve killed that way? I mean, a real Sentinel would have gotten out, don’t you think?”

The man chuffs an agreement and she lifts her gaze to meet sly, mud-brown eyes. The fear in his scent is gone now, entirely overpowered by the _something_. Excitement, she thinks, letting her gaze slide away with murmured thanks, trying to give the impression that she’s distracted by the thought. Bells grumble sullenly as she opens the door, allowing the drifting motes of grey-violet mist to dissipate into the uncomfortably moist, late August air.

“Y’all come back soon, Miz Venatori,” he calls as she crosses the threshold. “Let us know if everything is as you like it.”

“I’ll do that!”

Excitement… and _hunger._

If there’s something she’s learned in the past year, it’s to trust what her senses are telling her. Maribelle forces her muscles into relaxation, carefully monitoring her own heartrate and pheromones. She doesn’t smell of fear, but concern has certainly leaked into the air that surrounds her. She unlocks the Range Rover she purchased for the trip: deliberately overpriced, overfancy, and overforeign to match Diana Venetori’s little-miss-rich persona, and tosses her purse carelessly inside before getting in.

She can feel eyes on her, from the small grocer down the street to the tiny, white-steepled church that sits bright-faced and hollow across the unkempt city square. Maribelle forces herself to wave cheerfully at the people who watch her pass by, marking the faces in her mind. Grey-violet wisps boil fitfully along the floorboards, not entirely manifested, but she can hear fitful growls and innumerable snapping teeth as she passes the abandoned used car lot that marks the outer boundary of the town.

The drive up to what her uncle had somewhat hilariously called a _cabin_ – not a word that Maribelle herself would use for what, from the photos, looked like a dilapidated shack that hadn’t seen a kind hand since before the turn of the 18 th century – is uneventful, if unnecessarily rough. It makes her uneasy, the way the Land Rover jogs over the derelict country road. Potholes and strips of loosely packed earth take the place of the well maintained road her uncle’s notes spoke of.

It’s something she’ll have to investigate later, Maribelle thinks as she rounds the curve of the hill and sees the cabin for the first time. Situated as it is on the edge of the gloaming wood, she counts herself fortunate that the south-facing acreage is large and clear enough to hold a bank of up-to-date solar cells sufficient to power the entire town of Whippoorwill’s Landing. The ramshackle hut is oddly picturesque, set between the blood and gold of the westering sun and the shifting emerald darkness of brooding boughs and ancient trunks.

She halts the car, parking in the spot central to the solar cells, setting the electric batteries of the vehicle to charge before slumping back, eyes closing against the glare of the setting sun. The scent of rich earth fills her nose, coating her tongue and throat with flavor of ancient earth and listless waters. The buzz of insects fills the air, almost drowning out the birdsong emanating from beyond the treeline and the near subsonic thunder of feet, small and large, moving along trails and branches.

 _Sentinels, they don’t see with they’s eyes._ The words echo in her mind, along with the distant flavor of stardust and soul’s-blood. It was the first lesson she’d learned from another Sentinel, and one of the most valuable. So Maribelle doesn’t need to open her eyes to see grey-violet mists boil out, impossible fractals spilling from every corner and shadow. Razor-spined Hounds mill about her unmoving form as Maribelle looses her awareness from her body, sinking into the earth and sky, flowing outward with the lazy streams.

There, in the distance, is Whippoorwill’s Landing, a grey, dispirited smudge against the sun’s burnished light. The residents flicker a dim and tarnished silver in her awareness, but something there, deep in the bowls of the town’s center smolders, ruddy and throbbing. It tastes of old blood and halting, labored breaths, and Maribelle retreats as it stirs. She shudders as she pulls away, leaving behind her the faintest web of awareness to keep her from being surprised by threats from the main road.

It’s with a sense of relief that she spins threads through the lowland forest, brushing through the sweet-scented wood and along game trails unpolluted by human hands. The Hounds grumble a purring anticipation as she thinks of running, unfettered, through the trees.

Maribelle sweeps upward, into the darker, older wood, where the towering trees loom. Gnarled, ancient sentries stand guard in chaotic ranks, spiraling upward, toward the crown of the hill, where a promethean darkness lurks, impenetrable to her senses. Maribelle slams back into her body, shaking. She has no idea what she’s just seen, but it frightens her in a way that nothing has in a year.

Maribelle thought there was nothing more terrifying than the unspeakable place where she’d watched Alan Petty bleed out an innocent woman’s shining soul.

She was wrong.

“I’m insane if I stay,” she tells the alpha Hound, who sits at her feet, all razor spines and impossible angles as it stares at her without eyes. Its tongues spill out in mind-bending fractals, dripping shards of an unmade universe on the floorboards. Sanity, it seems to say, is overrated.

Maribelle’s here for the library that her uncle hid beneath the ancient cabin. She’s here to train herself to use the senses she’s spent a life suppressing out of fear of discovery. There’s no law that says she needs to go near whatever that… that _thing_ is, atop the hill. She needs to learn and this is the best place she has to do it.

She gets out of the car, unloading luggage and supplies as efficiently as she can. She’s not excited about staying outside in the baleful darkness. The inside of the cabin is far better appointed than the outside implies. There’s a tiny, but modern, kitchen area tucked into the corner of the main living space. There’s only a small shower stall in the bathroom, but the hot water is on demand, so she’ll have no cause to worry there. The waste is septic, but she supposes she can’t have everything, and it’s better than an outhouse.

The last room is empty, except for a bed with a bare, dust-covered mattress and a barely discernable trap door leading downward. Maribelle turns resolutely away, putting away her groceries and cleaning as much as she needs to in order to sleep. She’s exhausted enough by the effort to fall, almost immediately into a fitful doze when her head strikes the pillow, her last thought that tomorrow will be soon enough to explore.

-0-

Morning creeps in like a thief, stealing away troubled dreams that Maribelle can barely recall. The old bed is surprisingly comfortable and she’s oddly reluctant to leave it, despite the fractured images that tease the edges of her memory. She pulls a t-shirt and ancient jeans from her suitcase, letting the feel of whisper-soft cotton ground her senses. Her stomach growls and she feeds it an apple from the bag she brought.

She’s still licking the juice from her fingers when she feels something scrape along her awareness. Tarnished sliver flickers, darting furtively along the edge of her reach. It’s not a fly caught in the webbing she laid down, marking her area, it’s something else. It taps the outermost line, curiously familiar, before retreating just out of range.

Maribelle flicks the apple core into a waste bin, lips curving into a small, fanged smile. She slips her feet into a sturdy pair of running shoes, excitement sparking across her skin. It’s a lure, she thinks, meant to draw her attention. It’s possible that it’s _merely_ another online Sentinel hiding from the government and wary of what they sense, but Maribelle cannot put her faith in coincidence.

She drops a water bottle and some protein bars into a small backpack, sliding the worn, familiar straps over her shoulders. Her fingers drift over twin batons of ironwood, childhood companions gifted to her by her uncle when she’d reached puberty. They’d both known what she was and what would happen to her if she was ever discovered to be a sentinel.

The Institute for Sentinel Integration and Service would have taken her in and _butchered_ her, destroying everything that made Maribelle who she was. Government sentinels were soulless, heartless, breathing observation machines that could slip unnoticed through the tide of humanity. The government claimed that it was for the safety of society, for the good of the sentinels themselves that they be little more than emotionless automatons, but Maribelle’s uncle had had no truck with that.

Thus a childhood filled with lessons in self-control; martial arts and meditation, emotional balance and physical austerity. She picks up her sticks, sliding them into the sheaths that disguise them as structural support for the pack. Daylight calls her out the door, the morning still cool, but warming. The first step she takes into the light fills Maribelle with an unnamed, purely physical joy. The second stride launches her into a steady, ground-eating trot, grey-violet mists rising from her footsteps as reality folds and expands behind her in a steady, thrumming beat.

Maribelle laughs into the joyful, buzzing silence of the greenwood of the valley floor, predator and prey scattering before her like autumn leaves. She closes her eyes, merging her senses with the forest, her body becoming a small part of the greater whole. Vegetation and animals glow; a brilliant galaxy of shining motes swirling against the infinite void. Maribelle is just one more flickering in the endless dark, but the silver-bright glow of the world around her fills her with a dangerous euphoria.

She tucks herself into the ebb and flow of light, slowing as she approaches the edges of the web of awareness she’d set. Maribelle spirals down into her own form, reluctant to lose the sense of connected isolation. She comes to a halt at the edge of a clearing, sweat falling into her eyes as she opens them. Her breath hitches, painfully glorious. Air flows over her tongue, warm and scented of blood.

“You have not been careful.” The words echo in a familiar monotone.

Maribelle twists, quick as thought, avoiding a vicious, overhand blow. Her sticks are in her hands, moving like lightning and fury. A growl thunders, filling the air with a thousand discordant voices, the Hounds unfolding in screaming shards of a universe without time.

Her sticks connect in solid blows, drawing pained breaths as she spins away, letting an undeserving sapling take the retributive strike. Maribelle’s eyes meet those of her attacker and she slips, rolling as her alpha lunges over her fallen form, keeping the man away. It snarls, tongues tearing small, bleeding holes in reality as the Hounds circle around her.

“Ah.” The man steps back, the long blade in his hands lowering. “It was not believed that you knew how to defend yourself.”

“Zacharias?” she asks, hesitant. She rolls to her feet, and does not lower her sticks. The last time she met him, it had been when she had been ‘rescued’ by Alan Rho Petty, the man who claimed to rescue sentinels from the clutches of the Institute. In some sense it was true. Zacharias Whately had been one of the sentinels that had evacuated her to a safe house.

The actual safety of it being debatable. Maribelle has had a year to think about her experience in that strange, deceptive space, and still has no real understanding of what happened to her there. Had it been a dream? A nightmare? Or had she slipped between worlds when she fell into sleep?

“Yes.” Dark blue eyes stare at her from under a fringe of red-brown hair. “You remember.”

“I’m a sentinel,” she says tightly. “I do not forget.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “You are. You are strange.”

“Why are you here?”

“I told you. You have not been careful.” He points toward the clearing. “A new identity will not help you if they suspect your new self of being a sentinel as well.”

Wind parts tall grass, revealing the source of the scent of blood. Two people lie there, viciously savaged.

She stares at the bodies for a moment, letting her breath calm. “So, what, you’re giving them to me as a present?”

He shrugs, placid and unconcerned. Not that he’s capable of concern, or guilt, or even anger. Zacharias Whately – known more commonly as W204 – had been liberated from the Institute. Human emotion was stripped from him when he was taken, and Maribelle has no idea if there is any way to give it back to him.

She shakes her head. “Zach. Why did you kill them?”

His head tilts, an oddly human mannerism. It doesn’t look like the mimicry that she has seen other sentinels engage in. Maribelle wonders if it’s some kind of leftover from before his indoctrination.

“You disappeared,” he says. “It was strange. Mr. Petty was surprised. Mr. Petty is never surprised.”

Maribelle believes that. Alan Petty is equal parts terrifying and compelling.

“Is he looking for me? Is that why you’re here?”

“No.”

She waits, watching him as he watches the Hounds. The alpha growls at him and he looks up, a tiny frown creasing his brow.

“Did you want me to elucidate?”

“That would be nice.”

“I am. I think the word is curious. I think I’m curious.” He shrugs. “It is a childlike thing. I saw you in the dream realm. You fell from the path. No one ever strays from the path. You did. I don’t know why.”

Maribelle sways, and Hounds crowd her, helping her remain upright.

“I was afraid,” she says, lowering her sticks. “That’s the purpose of fear. To help you recognize things that are dangerous.”

He nods. “I see. The spike of adrenalin? That’s fear?”

Maribelle closes her eyes, for all the good it does her when she can still see him standing before her, only this time limned in faded light. It’s strange, the light that fills him is dim, but it isn’t the bare, guttering flicker that she associates with sentinels. The alpha grunts, trotting forward and circling the impassive man in a tightening spiral. It stops in front of him, clearly considering.

“No,” she says, staring down at the alpha. “I’m not taking him home.”

“Why not?” he asks.

“You just tried to kill me.”

“No.” He looks at her. “I did not think you could defend yourself. It need to be tested for certainty.”

Maribelle barely notices as the pack dissipates except for the alpha.

“So you attacked me?”

“Yes. If you had died, there would be no more need to kill the ones who follow you. Otherwise, you would be made aware of the danger.”

“That’s insane, you know.” She sheathes her sticks. “What if I’d killed _you?_ ”

“I don’t understand the question. I would be dead.”

-0-

Maribelle isn’t sure why she leads Zacharias back toward the cabin. He follows her with a serene indifference that cannot be called contentment. Her shoulder blades twitch, and she half expects him to bury the long, black blade he carries between them. Thoughts and questions float in the hot, wet air, paddling softly in their wake.

She stops at the edge of the greenwood, looking out over the rolling field of flowers that stretch between the light woods and the shadowed gnarls of the darkwood. Ice trickles down her spine as she notes the difference between the verdant and healthy grasses near her feet and the sickened ochres and browns that creep down the hill. The difference had not been so stark when painted in the shades of sunset.

“The land is ill.”

Maribelle pulls the bottle of water from her pack, cracking it with a quick twist of her wrist. She downs half the bottle before offering it to Zachariah.

“Sure seems to be,” she affirms, although it wasn’t really a question. He takes the bottle, staring at it with that strange, indifferent curiosity. “It’s just water, Zach.”

“Zach?” His eyes turn to her, a small line forming between them. “A… nickname?”

“Why not? Unless you want to be called something else.”

His head tilts again, his focus turned elsewhere. “I do not want anything. I do not know how.”

“Well do you know how to need?” Maribelle asks, flippant.

“Of course.” His focus returns outward.

“Well, it’s a hot day and you’ve been hard at work butchering people. You’re as sweaty as I am, you need water.”

“I know.”

Maribelle tries not to grind her teeth. “You need water, so I gave you some, Zach.”

“But it is _your_ water.”

“And these are my protein bars,” she says, shoving one into his hands. “We both need fuel and liquids. Eat and drink.”

“I don’t understand why you would expend resources on me.”

“Well, I don’t get why you would attempt to kill someone instead of asking if they’ve ever had self-defense training. Understanding isn’t necessary to take care of your needs, Zach.”

Something sparks in the back of his eyes, there and fading, like a broken match in the dark.

“Mari,” he says, tongue tripping over the syllables like a child over shattered cobbles. “Thank you?”

“Is that a question?” She unwraps her bar, nose scrunching a little at the scent of artificial flavors. “But you’re welcome anyway.”

He drinks the water slowly, baring his throat to her and the golden sunlight. Something inside her clenches at the sight, dark and hungry. Maribelle bites her lip, bruising it viciously as she fights the urge to claim the innocently offered submission. A subliminal growl vibrates through her, an unhuman laughter that stings and spills light into her other sight. She can feel the pack lurking in every corner and shadow.

She shoves the wrapper into her pack and the bar into her mouth, turning her taste buds off to avoid the flavor of necessary sustenance. Zach offers her a small smile, like a gift, handing her the empty bottle and wrapper. Mari looks away, disconcerted. The smile feels real and human, like the tilted head when he’s confused.

“Perhaps we should continue?”

“I suppose,” she says. “Do you have any other clothes?”

“Yes.”

Mari stares at him, waiting.

“You do not mean in general.”

“No.” Her lips quirk up. “And _you_ do that on purpose.”

“Yes.”

She laughs. “Why?”

“I find that it is something I need to do.” His blue eyes retain the dark impassivity common to all sentinels, but Maribelle can see the light inside of him flare brighter for just a moment.

“So, were you wandering the forest with only a large knife, or do you have supplies somewhere?”

“I have a room in the town.”

“You’ve been following me for a while then?”

He shakes his head. “I knew that you would come eventually. I’ve been waiting for almost a month.”

“You knew?”

“Professor Alfred Whitmore was your uncle. It made sense to track his resources. His mother’s family has owned land here since before the revolutionary war.” He stares out over the field. “I did not believe that the woman who turned from Mr. Petty would be so easily cornered by the Institute.”

“And the Sentinels?”

“They were hunting you. Diana Venatori has spoken of things the Institute does not want questioned. Everywhere she goes, the fire is mentioned. It is questioned. People speak of it with no attempt to hide their speech. Suspected sentinels have begun to disappear before the Institute can bring them in. They vanish before Mr. Petty can recruit them.”

“Ah.” She says. “But you said they were hunting for me because I haven’t been careful enough. That they suspect Diana Venatori to be a sentinel.”

“Diana Venatori is you, so it is a reasonable conclusion.”

“Zach. Elucidate please.”

“The ones hunting you were told that only someone who feared the Institute could hate it so much.” He shrugged.

“What, having a family member burn to death rather than submit isn’t enough reason?”

“I would not know,” he says, placid. “I have never felt hate or fear. How would I judge sufficient reason? And the point is moot. You _are_ a sentinel and your actions seem to stem from it.”

“I am more than a sentinel,” she snaps back at him, pulling her pack back on and moving forward. “I’m a person. And even if I wasn’t a sentinel, what the Institute does is _wrong._ Many people hate what they do.”

“So I have begun to observe. But so long as Diana Venatori stands in their way, they will label her a sentinel. It gives them the most power to act against you. Thus, you have not been careful enough.”

She growls, low and deep in her chest, his words prodding her into an angry run. They’re not that far from the cabin, especially if she crosses the sickened meadows, but Maribelle chooses to stay on the road, such as it is. He follows her, keeping pace with an irritating ease. The noise-filled silence that had comforted her on the way out of her door now fills her with dread. She doesn’t want this, has never wanted this.

Maribelle pours on speed, the knowledge that five minutes had been the difference between this life and her old one prodding her like a knife. If she’d taken just a few minutes longer to pack her desk, she’d have missed her bus. She would have called a cab and gone home and heard about the bus crash on the news. She might have been caught in the traffic jam, but she would never have been outed as a possible sentinel. She’d have forgotten her introduction to Alan Petty and gotten on with her life.

She rounds the bend and looks up at the tiny cabin that stares out, dark and vacant-eyed, over the sickly fields. In her old life she’d simply let it sit. In this one she needs it, needs the secrets it holds.

“Come on,” she says, slowing first to a trot and then a limping walk. “Somewhere in here there has to be a way to clean what you’re wearing and then I’ll take you back to town.”

The Hounds fade into sight, milling around her feet while the alpha sits by the door, gape-mouthed and laughing.

“What are they?” asks Zach, something like true curiosity leaching into his voice.

“The Hounds,” she says, simple and even, as she opens the door. “I am theirs as they are mine.”

-0-

The mystery of how to launder clothes without heading into town is solved when Maribelle opens the door on what she thought was a small linen closet by the bathroom and finds an ultra-modern washer/dryer unit that’s only a few years old. The incongruity of it sets her world to wobbling. It had been strange enough to realize that her uncle had spent many of his final years creating the escape hatch that is ‘Diana Venatori’, but the amenities of the tiny cabin, with its broken down and deceptive exterior, are top notch.

“There is a trapdoor here.”

“What are you doing in my bedroom?” she asks, incredulous.

“Exploring.”

“Well, stop.” She turns to see him step out, his expression faintly puzzled.

“You do not seem to be over-familiar with the location. It seemed prudent to look around.”

“If you weren’t Institute trained, I’d think you were in there to sniff my panties.” The words slip out before she can stop them and she claps a hand over her mouth in horror.

“Your scent is not objectionable,” he says. “At least, it does not cause negative bodily reactions, as offal or vomit might. Your cleansed clothes seem to be scented of lilac. It is… agreeable.”

It takes a moment to parse that he thinks she smells better than puke and when she does, her mouth drops open.

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” Maribelle tells him, then pauses, curious. “What makes something agreeable?”

“Endorphins are pleasant,” he says it like the simplest of truths, something so basic that it’s dismissed. “We are not supposed to seek them, but neither must we ignore them.”

In a heartbeat Maribelle goes from curious to furious. Everyone knows that the Institute trains sentinels so that they are little more than emotionless automatons, arguing that no one can be constantly exposed to the myriad petty evils of mankind without going completely mad or withdrawing into catatonia. But the sudden understanding of the dissociation seems somehow worse. Zach likes the scent of lilac and cannot name it.

He knows the rush of fear, the push of adrenalin, the pure physiological reactions of fight-or-flight and only an intellectual understanding of what it means, and even then, only when applied to others.

“You smell of aggression,” he says, eyes trained on the mysterious lumps that sit beneath thickly laden dust covers. “Is there any kind of vacuum?”

She blinks at the non-sequitur, fury receding in dazed startlement. “No, I didn’t think to bring one.”

“Ah.” Zach looks up, scanning the low ceiling. Maribelle follows his gaze, alighting on a handful of vents. “I believe there is an air filtration system, if you can find where to activate it. It might work best to remove the covers and then allow the system time to work. I will shower now and place my clothes in the wash/dry unit. I should then be able to dry and clothe myself while you take advantage of the shower.” He slides his eyes over to her. “Then you will take me back to Whippoorwill’s Landing and I will retrieve my things.”

Maribelle blinks at him, bemused. “Retrieve your things?”

“It will be easier to observe you here.”

“Now, wait just a minute. You’re not staying here.”

“Am I not?” he asks, curious. “We are safer together. There is no reason for Diana Venatori to have an extended stay in a shack in the woods. It is a better story that she has met with a lover for a secret get away.”

In theory, he’s right. It is a better cover story for the time she intends to spend here.

“We just met,” she says. “You are _not_ staying here.”

“We met last year.”

“You tried to kill me today.”

“I tested you,” he objects, sounding faintly aggrieved. “It was logical.”

“We can have met while hiking in the woods. We can go to dinner. You can attempt to woo me.”

He crosses his arms. “I’ve already killed for you.”

“You are not a cat. You do not get to leave bodies on my doorstep and call it a present.” The disturbing thing is that the part of her that spent years suppressing everything she was is horrified by the deaths. The stronger part, the part that’s waking up, the part that _wants_ , the _sentinel_ , is pleased with Zachariah’s offering.

The Hounds are, too. They keep flickering in and out of perceptible space, circling Zach but not touching him. Whenever their attention turns to him she has a sense of ponderous anticipation, a vastly gravid expectancy that swells and ripples with every word and gesture. Her instincts scream that she should not allow him out of her sight. He’s been broken by purely human monsters and isn’t safe. She can’t protect him if she leaves him in Whippoorwill’s Landing.

He tilts his chin up, exposing his throat before sighing acceptance. “I will wash.”

Maribelle starts to tell him that he can disrobe in the bathroom and shove the dirty clothes out so she can throw them in the washing unit, only to find that Institute-trained sentinels have nothing by way of body consciousness. Not that Zach has anything to be ashamed of. He’s lithe and lean-muscled, with a swimmer’s perfect body. His scent hits her like a hammer, musk and man in a way that she’s never allowed herself to contemplate. Her mouth dries and her heart trips unsteadily.

He looks at her, tongue flickering out as he takes a breath. She narrows her eyes at him in a silent dare to mention her sudden spike of arousal. His head tilts to the side, the way it does when he’s confused. It’s stupidly adorable. It’s a purely physical reaction to an attractive, fertile male and Maribelle knows it.

“The shower is that way,” Maribelle says, pointedly ignoring the fact that she’s not the only one having purely physiological reactions today and bending to pick up the discarded clothes. She feels his eyes linger on her for a moment before he goes into the bathroom and steps into the shower.

He doesn’t close the door, leaving her a clear line of sight to the shower stall.

For someone who has no discernable emotional states, Zachariah Whateley is a blatant sexual tease. Maribelle drops his clothes into the washer, adding her lilac-scented detergent with a slightly heavy hand and activates the most stringent cleansing cycle. The sonic half of the cycle, which should lift the blood away from the fabric, successfully rescues her from the maddening sound of skin sliding rhythmically against skin in a small symphony of pleasured little moans.

She leans against the wall, cherishing the sting as her head thumps back into the wood. Sharp, non-physical pricks sting against her thigh as the alpha manifests, rubbing against her. Maribelle sighs, sliding down to sit on the floor as the pack comes forward, begging for petting and attention. She closes her eyes and holds out her hands, letting them rub up against the brilliant light that rages within her like a star on the verge of going nova. Their spines and tongues pierce her skin, supping gently and delicately from her soul. Maribelle can see her light fold into their darkness, consumed yet not destroyed.

The flame within her steadies, shrinking slowly to fit more neatly within her skin as the Hounds feed. The darkness they return for her light makes what remains glow brighter against the seething void. All of her aches from the day vanish, leaving her humming with energy.

She hears the shower shut off, scenting skin and soap and satisfaction, and snarls to herself. Maribelle doesn’t want the complication that Zach represents. She can feel the alpha laughing as it slips away from the thinning pack to stare at the man emerging from the bathroom. He’s rubbing her only towel languidly over his skin.

He’s marked himself with her scents, she realizes abruptly. Zach smells of her soap and shampoo, lacking only the fragrance of her skin. The alpha paces around him, giving a low, and dangerous purr. The milling Hounds come to swift attention, filled with inhuman anticipation. Zach stills as each manifests fully into the physical world, their dark and shining angles warping impossibly in the late afternoon light.

Maribelle rises, stepping through their ranks on steadfast feet. She pulls the towel from his hands as she draws near and the drops it onto the floor. She lifts her sweat-stained t-shirt from her skin, pulling it over her head in a single smooth movement. Zach stares at her, something unfathomable burning behind his indifferent gaze. Maribelle holds her shirt up, less an offer than a command, and Zach pulls it from her fingers, sharp and urgent. A small, needy whine escapes his throat as he brings it to his nose, burying his face in the folds of cloth.

“Get him to find me something to wear,” she tells the alpha, fingers brushing over its head as she passes through the doorway to the bathroom. It chuckles an acknowledgement and she closes the door.

Maribelle spends a small eternity in the shower, allowing it to fill her senses to the exclusion of everything outside of the stall door. She’s vaguely aware of movement outside of the stall door, but registers it only as _pack_ , as _safety_ , so she ignores it in favor of hot, silky water and luxuriant bath products that feel like sin. When she finally steps out, she finds that her sweaty clothes have been replaced with ludicrously expensive versions of themselves, and the still-damp towel marked with the scent of Zach’s warm and naked flesh.

She lifts it to her nose, sighing softly before rubbing it over her skin. She _wants._ Gods of old, she _wants_ , but Maribelle knows that she’ll have to be satisfied with second-hand scent marking. She’s not so foolish as to believe that she can stand a relationship built upon physical needs and a literal inability to satisfy emotional ones.

She finds Zach sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, dust covers piled neatly beside him. The late afternoon sun blazes through the windows, turning the air into a galaxy of shining motes. He’s apparently found the switch for atmospheric unit, as she can hear the hum of the filtration and temperature control units in the background. He looks up at her, eyes dark and shining. The Hounds are nowhere to be seen, but they’ve left their marks upon him. His inner flame burns against the great emptiness of the void, small but bright and growing.

“Mari,” he says, reverent, the long line of his throat exposed. She trails a finger along it, smelling her sweat mixed with his skin, fraught and heady. He bows his head under her hand and her fingers tangle in his hair, petting gently.

“Come on, Zach. You promised me dinner.”

“We should get my things,” he says, flowing upward, loose and graceful.

“You’re still not staying here,” she tells him, rolling her eyes. He touches her hand, bringing her palm to his lips.

“I bet I could convince you,” he says. “Endorphins are pleasant.”

“They are. But I don’t need them.” She pulls away, reluctant.

“No,” he tells her. “But you want them.”

Maribelle shrugs. There’s no denying that.

-0-

They drive into Whippoorwill’s Landing hitting what Maribelle mockingly thinks must be the evening rush minute. There are perhaps ten cars on the road, all of them acting like morons at a four way stop sign. Zach ignores her running, vengeful commentary, directing her to the ‘nicer’ of the two restaurants in town.

“The Midnight Call has food that is palatable enough,” he tells her, “but if I am to be seen wooing you, The Star of Wisdom is the ‘good’ restaurant in town.”

She snorts. “But the real question is, how’s the food?”

“An eclectic combination of Indian, Southeast Asian, and Polynesian,” he tells her. She blinks at him in surprise. Whippoorwill’s Landing isn’t the kind of town that she would have expected to find food any more ethnic than your average pizza place. “It is less likely to cause physical illness than the dubious offerings at the diner.”

Maribelle wrinkles her nose. ‘Unlikely to cause illness’ isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. Still, the aromas that saturate the air around the restaurant are delightful and far more authentic than she would have expected American palates to tolerate. She eyes the weathered sign thoughtfully. It’s clear that the restaurant has been in town for years, perhaps even generations. She lets the incongruity of it go with a small sigh, sliding out of the Land Rover and locking it.

Zach circles around the back of the vehicle, eyes alert, and takes her hand. He bends to breathe a kiss over her knuckles and as he straightens his face settles into an expression of wondering admiration that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Maribelle shivers at the transformation, reminded of just how insidious the Institute’s sentinels can be. He begins to prattle, an aural mask of small talk as he describes the town and the time that he’s spent within it, exploring.

It’s a well-worn mask that fits so closely to his skin that only those looking for its falsities are likely to notice how practiced and precise the gestures and words are, how calculated. It works like a charm, too. Suspicious eyes dismiss them as harmless tourists, and the wait staff – clearly familiar with his affected preferences – bring out a small tray of appetizers without being asked.

“So who’s this?” asks the painfully young waitress as she sets out spring rolls and pot stickers. Zach’s lips rise in a perfect, flirtatious curve.

“A beautiful wood nymph that I met while hiking today.”

The girl giggles, turning to look at her. “You must be the lady who inherited the old Whitmore place. I heard you was pretty.”

Maribelle flushes, eyes dropping to her hands. She never knows what to do with statements like that.

“Aww. You’re shy. Good thing Mr. White here is so outgoin’.”

“Karen, dear, your mother needs you in the back,” a smooth voice interrupts. Maribelle looks up to find a tall, thin man standing beside her and almost jumps. She hadn’t felt him approach and that raises her hackles far more than an intrusive teen’s thoughtless words. He looks down at her, ice-white brows carved jagged and harsh above water-pale eyes. “I apologize for my daughter. We see so few strangers, she forgets that familiarity isn’t always welcome.”

“No harm done,” says Zach, running his fingers lightly over hers in a close parody of comfort. “Karen’s delightful and always made me feel so welcome.”

“It’s not every day we get historians poking about the town library and the old skirmish sites.”

“Amateur historian,” Zach laughs. “It’s mostly an excuse to explore like a kid. Diana, this is Mr. Lee, the owner of this fine establishment.”

“Hello,” she says brightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Ah, the Whitmore girl,” he says. “You’ve that look about you.”

She can feel the crease between her brows. “What do you mean?”

The man laughs, like ice-rimed bells. “There’s always a Whitmore on the Hill.”

Maribelle stares at him, controlling her shivering by sheer dint of will. She feels Zach threading his fingers through hers, squeezing gently as Mr. Lee’s dreadful chuckles fade into silence.

“How’s the tandoori chicken?” she asks Zach without looking away from those pale, bogwater eyes.

“Delicious. With naan?”

“Of course, what’s life without naan?”

“Indeed,” says Mr. Lee. “An excellent choice. And for you?”

“Lamb vindaloo. And tea.”

“I’ll bring out a pot for you to share.” Mr. Lee gives them a thin smile before departing.

“Amateur historian?” she asks, whispering below the threshold of normal human hearing. Zach looks at her as she scans the room to see if anyone else can hear.

“Careless dilettante?” he returns the same way. Her shoulders shift, lifting in a minute shrug before she forces herself to relax.

They sit in silence for a few moments before Zach begins to natter about the local history and the battles that were fought in the area during both the revolutionary and civil wars. He’s expounding upon a skirmish that happened in the clearing where they met when Karen returns with their food. The girl’s eyes are blank and emotionless as she sets out the dishes and fills their water glasses.

“Are you all right?” Maribelle asks, shifting her attention from her eyes to the fullness of her senses. The space where the girl’s soul should be is shadowed, filled with a baleful, ruddy darkness that’s more terrifying than emptiness could be. Karen says nothing, turning away to head into the back of the restaurant. The aromas wafting from her plate are delicious.

Delicious, but somehow not like food. She doesn’t want to consume anything made by the Lee’s hands. She squeezes Zach’s fingers, turning her attention to the other patrons. The few that remain stare at her with empty, glassy orbs. “Maybe we should get our meals to go. I’m not sure how hungry I am for food.”

She aims at sultry, but is fairly certain she hits silly instead. Zach blinks, a slow sweep of unfairly long lashes, as she brings his fingers to her lips. She tastes the salt-sweet of his skin with the flick of her tongue before sucking the digit in suggestively.

He fumbles for his wallet, an intricate display deceit even as passionless eyes make the circuit of the room. She releases his finger with a lewd pop, rising to her feet. Money hits the table and Zach pushes his chair back. “I can think of things I’d rather do than eat.”

He doesn’t bother to hide his erection as he stands.

Eyes trail them as they leave the restaurant, an observation she can feel even when they’re outside. The listless, ruddy awareness she encountered the night before is watching them with a sluggish lassitude. Zach hums a bit under his breath as they see a small handful of other townsfolk on the sidewalk, staring vacant and hollow.

“Follow my lead,” he murmurs as they reach the car. Zach braces his hands on either side of her body, leaning in as she turns to face him. Their mouths meet in a mess of danger and lust, and for a moment Maribelle thinks that she might be able to tolerate a fuck-buddy relationship with a Sentinel, because Zach may not have wants, but he knows exactly what to do with physical _needs._ They might be putting on a show to distract whomever, or _whatever,_ but Maribelle has never wanted anything in her life the way she wants the cock that’s grinding against her.

“Get in the goddamn car,” she hisses against his mouth the moment she can draw breath.

He laughs, low and dirty, and the sound rips through her like orgasm.

“Mari,” he whispers against her skin. “You make me _feel._ ”

She shudders as he pulls away, thanking the engineering gods for the magical key that unlocks her door by virtue of existing in her pocket. “Zach.”

Zach laughs as she slides in and unlocks his door.

“Mari,” he shoots back, climbing in. She locks the doors, breathing hard as pheromones flood the interior. “You are pleasing to the senses. It would be pleasant to touch you further.”

“Not while I’m driving,” she says, starting the engine.

“Then I will have to touch myself.”

“Jesus _fuck._ _Not while I’m driving._ You keep your hands away from your, your, your fucking joystick.”

“Would you find it a distraction?”

“You’re a trained sentinel,” she hisses, pulling out of the parking spot. “You figure it out.”

“Your heart rate has spiked, you’re flush with excitement. I think you want to see. You could have, if you’d watched me shower.”

“Were you testing me?”

“Of course. Endorphins are always pleasant.” There’s a curl to the words that spikes heat in her belly. “They’re better when shared.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” The words slip through her verbal filter before she can stop them and she keeps her eyes on the road. She’s not ashamed of the fact she’s never taken anyone up on the offer of sex – as Zach’s already proven, it’s a challenge to her control – but she doesn’t go around telling people either.

“You are not a child of the Institute,” Zach says, tone _thoughtful_. She doesn’t take her eyes from the road, even a few idiots is far too many and they all seem to be going her way. “I was taught that sentinels would seek pleasure to the point of losing themselves in it.”

“A sentinel that wants no truck with the Institute seeks moderation,” she snaps at him. “I can’t afford pleasure or pain.”

“But you’re not suppressing yourself anymore,” he says. “You can enjoy your senses.”

“You don’t seem to be repressed anymore,” she snarks back. “You can enjoy your _emotions._ ”

“I believe you may be right,” he says, startling her as they pull in to the small, dingy motel.

“Go get your things,” she orders, tightly aware of vehicles approaching in the distance. “Is that your car?”

“Yes, but we’ll leave it if we must.” It’s not a question. She knows that he can hear them, too, and the low, irregularly regular thudding that shakes the still air.

“Move!” He slips out, his long legs taking him to the far end of the parking lot in a smooth, unhurried glide. Maribelle taps her fingers on the steering wheel as she sits, tense and waiting, wondering if it’s just paranoia or if the _something_ of Whippoorwill’s Landing really is watching her.

A woman walks out from the small motel’s office, bottle-green eyes brimful of malice. She stands, hands clasped before her as though in prayer. Dark words ooze, squirming and profane, from fishbelly lips. They reverberate in the air in an unholy chord, their writhing disharmony narrowing Maribelle’s awareness to what little lies directly around her.

Maribelle growls, throwing the car into gear just as headlights arc across empty space, throwing the woman into stark relief. The dark, loathsome pressure dissipates as the woman throws her hands up to shade them against the brilliant headlights. Maribelle relaxes slightly, turning her head to look at the newcomers. A couple, it looks like, with the look of the locals.

The blazing, blue-white brights shut off and the man gets out, a weary smile hanging precariously under a cool, dispassionate gaze. The woman sitting in the front seat wears her emotions far more comfortably, fingers tapping nervously over the surface of a tablet, eyes darting everywhere but at the sentinel, or her surroundings. _Leash_ , Maribelle thinks, one of the normal humans who sometimes served as a conscience for less… well-adjusted sentinels. Given that Zach has left two bodies in the woods to be fed on by animals, the arrival of a new team before the dead one could be missed is troubling.

Maribelle frowns, watching as Zach comes out from his room, a large backpack in hand. He heads over toward the motel office, fitting an amiable smile to his lips as he approaches the green-eyed woman and the newcomer. He asks to settle up the bill and if he can come back for his car in the day, since he’s found another bed for the night. His hips make a lewd little twitch as he speaks, making the woman laugh, dark and knowing. The man stares at Zach with cold, assessing eyes, nostrils flaring slightly. All three enter the office and Mari fights the urge to extend her senses further.

She looks back at the car, finding the eyes of its passengers on her. The woman’s mouth is set, thin lips pressed together in an unforgiving line. Maribelle quirks an eyebrow at them, offering a jaunty little wave as she tries to relax back into her seat.

Zach prowls out, all loose-limbed and liquid grace, and the wet heat of her arousal returns, despite the danger or possibly because of it. She unlocks the doors, letting him toss his bag into the back before he climbs in. Maribelle makes a point of drawing him in for a kiss before he can belt in. He smiles against her lips, before licking between them in a carnal display that would likely get them arrested in Arkham.

Her foot slips from the brake for a moment and the rover surges forward for an instant. He pulls back, panting.

“You probably should drive,” he tells her. “Or put the car in park. Either one, I don’t really care at this point.”

“Asshole,” she says as he belts in. “We’re not doing this in the car.”

“You do have a perfectly adequate bed,” he agrees, his hand drifting to her leg. She slaps it back with a laughing growl.

“ _Not_ while I’m driving.”

-0-

The trip back is eerily quiet, the irregular beat of the silent air fading to nothing as they pass beyond the town square. The church watches them go past, gape-mouthed and lolling, ruddy light smoldering in the hollow-eyed windows.   Maribelle keeps her eyes diverted, but it means nothing to her awareness. Half the town seems to be swallowed by the church’s baleful depths and she’s grateful when they pass the town’s limits, and their twisting chants no longer dust her skin like ash.

They pass into the lower end of the valley and she takes a deep breath, feeling something in her chest loosen with clean scent of trees and lazy water. Musk and man permeate the cabin, feeding the low fire in her belly with each pass of air through her lips. Zach rubs his hands languidly along his own thighs, pointedly avoiding the bulge at their apex.

She parks the Rover by the solar cells, her hands dropping from the wheel like stones.

“You’re not driving,” says Zach, unlocking his belt and leaning into her. His lips brush against hers, soft and needy, and she sighs into them, opening to his questing tongue. Her hands slide up his chest, cradling his neck and jaw as their tongues tangle, a dance of touch and taste that leaves her wet and wanting. She barely hears the sound of her seatbelt disengaging over the thunder of their hearts.

“I want to touch you,” he whispers the words against her skin, lips trailing into her hairline. “Taste you everywhere.”

She laughs against his throat. “What, like in Arkham and Lhasa and Mozambique?”

His hand slides up from her waist to cup her breast, making her gasp. “Like here,” he says, “and here.”

The hand sweeps down, slipping to her thighs to cup the ache between them.

“Not,” she pants, “in the _car._ ” Her hand fumbles for the latch. He pulls away.

“I suppose I can wait for Paris,” he says with a sigh, sliding his fingers into his mouth on a wet swirl of tongue.

Maribelle gets the door open, tumbling out gracelessly.

“I have a perfectly comfortable bed,” she tells him, slamming the door on his grinning face.

“That works, too.” The words are muffled by the door and she marches up to the cabin, unlocking it with shaking hands. She hears the passenger door close behind her and wonders what she thinks she’s doing. Zachariah Whateley is a _sentinel._ He’s already confessed to not knowing love or fear or hate. Intimacy is dangerous. Even though she doesn’t have to hide what she is, every touch loosens her control, threatening her safety. Her hand lies on the doorknob, her forehead resting against the solid planking of the door.

Strong hands come to rest at her hips.

“You smell of fear.” The fingers tighten. “I don’t like it.”

Her breath hitches as he names it, terror crashing through her. “I don’t know what to do.”

“So you said,” the hands pull away. “You are unfamiliar with sexual activity.”

Maribelle snorts, almost laughing. “I rarely touch myself, Zach. It’s too dangerous.”

“Perhaps we should go inside.”

Maribelle opens the door, leading them both inside. “I’m sorry.”

“What for? There was pleasure and then there was fear,” he shrugs. “Endorphins are pleasant, but not necessary. I would like release, but I do not _need_ it.”

“No,” she says. The interior of the cabin is pleasantly cool and dust-free. “We didn’t eat.”

Her stomach gurgles, reminding her that it’s been hours since she forced a power bar on him.

“We should do that,” he says.

“I did bring supplies, and I’m a fair cook.” Maribelle walks over to the small kitchen, glad of something to do that isn’t letting her mind spin in useless circles. Zach leans against a wall, expression schooled to sentinel impassivity, but his eyes are dark with something unfathomable.

“You are beautiful,” he says as she sets out the necessities of a small meal. Maribelle stares down at her hands, where they lay flat on the counter. “I thought so when we met, but did not say. I didn’t say a lot of things. But you were beautiful and scared and defiant and not like any other sentinel we had ever retrieved.”

Maribelle had been small and mousy and terrified, in control by dint of training and will. Her only other option had been to let the Institute classify her and maim her and make her someone who would leave an injured child on a burning bus.

She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing, letting her hands move on autopilot.

“You were there when he took Allison Ward. You were not supposed to be. You saw what he does before you agreed, he has never permitted that before. You ran. You escaped.”

“Yes,” she says, finally, watching her white sauce thicken. “I don’t know why he was doing what he did, but he spilled her soul out like it was poisoned water.”

“It’s what they do to make us what we are.”

Her eyes whip to his, blood draining from her face.

“What?”

“It is what the Institute does, only Alan binds sentinels to himself, not to the Institute and its directives. Sentinels he liberates are tied to him by similar rites.”

Her nose tells her that her sauce is on the edge of scorching, so she turns away, stirring it blindly.

Zach comes up behind her. “You escaped. I needed to understand how.”

“I thought you didn’t understand want.”

“I understand need, Mari.” His hands gather up shredded cheese, dropping it carefully into the white, bubbling thickness in the pot. “Keep stirring.”

She does that while he adds pasta to the boiling water on the other heating element.

“I needed to understand, because I needed to leave, too. I saw you and knew that I needed you and that you needed me.” He sniffs the air. “More garlic, and a touch of salt, I think.”

“Pepper,” she counters, “and some fresh basil.”

“You don’t have any fresh basil.”

“There’s some in the fridge.”

He looks inside. “There’s garlic in here, too.”

She grabs the small pepper grinder she brought with her and sets to work as he pulls the required items from the small fridge. A container of shredded parmesan appears next to her elbow and she smothers a laugh. “I was planning to garnish with that.”

“In the sauce,” he says. “It’s better that way.”

Maribelle pauses for a moment. “You have opinions.”

“I know what things feel better,” he says. “Parmesan in the sauce and on top of it is one of them. It’s not an opinion, so much as a detailed list of things that bring me pleasure. The rest… I don’t know how to explain. With you I… feel. Complex reactions that I am not supposed to have. A knowledge of preferences. Ever since we met, but stronger now.”

She sets the sauce itself onto a backburner, so she can sauté the garlic and basil in oil and a little bit of butter. Zach manages to get the pot of pasta over to the sink for decanting without bashing her in the face with a pot filled with boiling water and they manage to assemble the meal without bodily harm, despite the tight quarters.

There’s no dining room, but there is a coffee table and a plethora of pillows to be seated on.

Maribelle eats slowly, thinking about what Zach has said. In the back of her mind she can feel a cold and sparkling darkness pulse. It spins, expanding and contracting in random patterns that surge with meaning. She knows it, in the way she knows the Hounds, as a shard of an unmade universe, a reality shattered long before theirs was spun into sensuous, curved space-time. When she closes her eyes, she can see specks of it in Zach’s soul, sharp edges slicing through the few remaining strands of grotty, pustulent webbing that smother and drain the star fire that should burn within him.

“I was trained not to feel,” she finally says, setting her fork down on her empty plate. “Or, rather, not to react much to the emotions I have.”

She meets his eyes, surprised to find something like sorrow there.

“I don’t regret it. I was included in the choice to learn control, to build it. To live a life so ruthlessly average that they’d never take a look at me, but…” her eyes drop back to her plate, “…if I choose to be what I am, I have to let go of things that kept me safe.”

“And so you are afraid when we touch.”

She nods slowly, forcing her hands to remain still. “Sentinels have always been the enemy, Zach. Extremes have always been my enemy. And I want – I’ve always wanted – more than just being touched.”

Zach rises to his feet, taking the dishes into the kitchen while she stares blindly at the glass top of the table.

She hears the water run for a moment, and then the dish washer being loaded and turned on. He comes around the corner of the kitchen nook, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel before tossing it aside.

“There is more to it than just the pleasure of your skin,” Zach says softly, dropping to his knees beside her. “I do _feel_ Mari. I’ve been searching for you, waiting for you.”

“That sounds more like obsession than caring.”

“You...” He draws a shuddering breath, fingers reaching out to brush hers. “You’re the whole, Mari. You’re the center of what we’re supposed to be. You’re the reason the Hounds have come; the first of us to feel fear and use it, not to run, but to fight. What is a Huntress without her Pack?”

The walls of reality tremble with mournful, baying howls as the words shred something inside of her, a dark and blighted tangle that has choked her all of her life. Her senses flood open, bright and painful, before steadying.

“Mari. Mari!” Fear dusts Zach’s scent, sharp like ozone, and she opens her eyes. She finds herself smiling, looking up from where she’s slumped onto the floor and lifting a hand to brush russet brown hair from eyes as dark as a sapphire sea.

“Shhh,” she says, brushing her thumb against his lips. Zach is hers, the way the Hounds are hers, the way every sentinel who has been stolen from her is hers. His eyes grow heavy lidded at her touch, tongue flicking out to taste her skin. Maribelle pushes herself up, taking his lips softly, gently, as his arms come around her waist. “Shhh. I’m here, Zach.”

Her hands thread into his hair as he moans into her mouth, needy and desperate the way he had been with her shirt. His hands slip beneath the soft, white silk of the shirt he’d chosen for her and Maribelle trembles at the touch.

“Please,” she whispers, arching as a warm, calloused palm cups her breast. Clever fingers pluck at the nipple and she feels it, sharp and aching in her womb.

“Yes,” he murmurs, shifting them both before lifting her from the floor, bridal-style. Later, she thinks, she’ll be impressed by the feat, but for the moment she wraps her arms around his neck, trailing her lips along Zach’s jaw to a place behind his ear that makes his scent pile spike with pheromones she wants to drown in. There’s a moment of freefall before she bounces on the bed, and Maribelle glares at him for taking her toy away.

“May I see you?” he asks as she rises to her knees. In response she peels off the shirt and then slowly unclasps the bra, letting the scraps of silk hang from her shoulders to frame the red-flushed swell of her breasts. He pulls his own shirt off, tossing it aside with careless disdain and Maribelle laughs, releasing the strict controls she’s always held on her senses, letting her _self_ , her _sentinel_ free.

He stalks her over the covers, a prowling crawl before pouncing, his lips fastening on one raspberry peak like a man starving.

“God, yes.” She arches into the suction, so enthralled by the wet heat, the clever swirl of the tongue, that she barely notices the hand at her waist before it slips into her jeans. A finger brushes over her clit and she comes on a surprised gasp, hips jerking as he slides his fingers through her wetness.

“Mari,” his hand slips free of her pants, painting her slick over breast before pulling her mouth to his. She trails her hands down his chest, letting them rest at the buttons of his jeans. “Please.”

“Need to get these off,” she mutters. He chuffs a laugh against her skin, sucking the path of juices he left on her flesh. She manages to get his fly open, pulling the hot, silken length of him from the cloudy softness of well-worn cotton. Maribelle slips a hand into her pants, and oh, gods, she’s wet. It’s easy enough to get her fingers slick and close them around the cock she desperately wants to fill the empty, throbbing ache inside her. Gentle hands pull at her jeans and she wriggles, shimmying until they’re down, they’re off, and a finger thrusts hotly inside of her, thick and foreign and perfect and not enough.

“Tight,” he murmurs, thumb rubbing circles around her clit as he starts to fuck her slowly with it.

“Virgin.” She brings her palm to her lips, tasting herself and pre-come and desperate desire. She slides down, bringing him with her as their hips interlock. “Fix it.”

“You’re not the one who’s broken,” he tells her, bracing himself above her. Their eyes lock as she guides him in, Maribelle’s eyes falling shut as he slides deep. Then Zack begins to move and galaxies begin to burn behind her eyes.

-0-

Maribelle sleeps, slick and sated; her dreams spin, filled with alien constellations and foreign suns that dance in crystal spheres. The alpha lopes ahead of her, running on a thousand disjointed feet, the pack spreading out behind, filling the infinite void with a thousand points of dark. She follows him, down glittering angles and improbable polyhedrons, to a world of sharp and beguiling edges. The alpha’s fractals shimmer and spike, grief spilling like soul’s blood as she walks between alien buildings that welcome her to a home she will never know.

Beings of light and music perambulate between shimmering, jeweled spires. Unencumbered by anything so pedestrian as flesh, they flow up and down unseen paths, followed faithfully by fractals of darkness. Somewhere, far above them, the crystal spheres crack. A wave of discordant, shrieking filth rains down, silencing the music and snuffing every light. The towers shatter, consumed by the repugnant, writhing shadow and Maribelle screams, horror pulling her awake in the false dawn.

A weight holds her down in the spectral light and she flails against it.

“Mari.” Warm breath, sour with sleep, flows past her ear. “MARI. Stop!”

She shudders into stillness, staring up into cold blue eyes that hold a foreign glimmer of concern.

“Zach.” Maribelle says it like a prayer, a ward against the unclean darkness that devours universes whole. He’s lying on top of her, a heavy blanket of flesh and bone, scented of sex and fear. Zach rolls to the side, pulling her over so she’s the one sprawled atop him, loosening the bruising grip he’d held on her wrists.

“You okay?” His fingers trail back and forth along the arm she throws over his chest. Shoulder to wrist and back again, gentle and calming. Maribelle hums noncommittally, letting her fingers slide up the smooth, hairless skin of his chest to play idly with a nipple. His hand moves to brush her bangs away from her eyes. “Mari?”

“Bad dream,” she says, sliding a thigh between his and undulating softly. “Distract me?”

“If you like.” He rolls her back over, settling between her thighs like last piece of the puzzle. She arches into him, breathless and needy, as he slides down, a trail of bright bruising kisses left in his wake. His fingers sink deep and she gives an achy moan, sore and wanting as they fuck her open. His tongue flicks out, hot and wet and greedy, and Maribelle falls into sensation, letting Zach catch her.

-0-

Mari wakes again to the sound of thunder, deep-throated and ponderous, roiling overhead. Rain pours from the heavens, a roaring army of droplets marching over the roof of the cabin in steel-booted rows. She’s alone in the bed, aching in places she didn’t know she had and irrationally pleased at the soreness.

She stretches luxuriantly, cataloguing the small pains and red-purple marks with a deep satisfaction she hadn’t known was missing from her life.

“Pleased with yourself, are you?” Zack stands in the doorway of the bedroom, an open button-down shirt thrown over low-slung jeans he’s only partially fastened.

Maribelle looks at the marks she’s left on him, the long weals and love-bites, and nods. She slides out of bed, wobbling, just a little, as a few more aches make their presence known and saunters over to him. “Good morning.”

He looks down at her, sentinel-impassive with laughing, midnight eyes, and pulls her in. The kiss is intimate without being erotic, and joy blooms behind her ribs, lighting her inner sight like a sun. Her arms slide around his waist and she sighs, reveling in the feel of skin on skin. Something like laughter rumbles in his chest and she feels Zach’s hands rest on her shoulders.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… clothes Mari. You’re very distracting this way.”

Maribelle shoves her nose into his not exactly clothed chest and then blows a raspberry against his sternum.

He pulls away with a laughing ‘ewww!’ and she feels a grin pull at her lips. Happiness, pure and childlike, crests within her, bubbling its way out in bell-like giggles. She closes the bedroom door and chooses the clothes she’ll wear for the day, picking worn and comfortable favorites before heading into the bathroom to shower.

Zach has left her with a slightly damp towel, and Mari can’t bring herself to be irritated. Rubbing his scent into her skin isn’t quite as good as getting his sweat all over her, but it’s more socially acceptable. She brushes her teeth, resolving to get a good kiss in, because she already misses his taste, and makes her way into the living area. She’s known he was cooking – the scent of bacon and griddlecakes has been making her crazy – but to find breakfast waiting on the coffee table, complete with coffee and some fresh squeezed juice, is just this side of overwhelming.

“Have you been reading self-help books on how to be the world’s best boyfriend?”

His lips curve into a small, subtly cheeky smile. “Once I was done with ‘Clitoral Stimulation for Dummies.’”

“Apparently you took good notes.”

“Hopefully I passed the practical. My examiner was really exacting. But even if I didn’t, practice makes perfect and it’s so helpful to have a partner, you know?”

Maribelle chokes on her juice and enjoys the sound of his laughter. When she closes her eyes, his inner light is a strong and brilliant, a coruscating ball of sweetly burning plasma that is nothing like the small flame that had sheltered within his corporeal body the day before. His laughter is music that sheds shells of light with every breath.

Around them, the Hounds gather, their dark, swirling fractals swallowing that star-fire whole. The alpha pads over, leaning roughly into her shoulder as she eats, drinking Maribelle’s light from her skin, but pushing no further. She’s almost done with her breakfast when he flops down on the floor, neck and belly exposed to her touch. Maribelle thinks very little of it, giving him a good belly rub the way she might’ve if the alpha had been an actual _dog_ , as opposed to a semi-coherent fractalloid refugee from a universe of edges and polyhedra. His edges no longer pierce the meniscus of her soul, but he seems happy enough to sup on the chiming shells of light her spirit sheds in every moment.

Her mind catches up a moment later and she stares down into the laughing mass of tongues and time and then shrugs. Who is she to deny improbable beings of darkness and space belly rubs if they want them?

Zach rises, bussing the table and loading the washer while she all but coos at the squirming not-mass of the alpha Hound. When he comes back, he sits down beside them, dropping a kiss into her the shining rainbow of her short hair.

“So what are we going to do today?” he asks, and she glances at him out of the corner of her eye. He’s leaning back on his elbows, the long line of his belly and throat exposed and defenseless, and she licks her lips. The alpha chuffs, oddly approving as it pads over to Zach, tongues writhing softly over soft, vulnerable flesh before its mouth hovers over Zach’s neck.

Zach growls, deep and throaty, shoving creature away.

“She is my alpha, not you.”

The Pack circles, seemingly uncertain and Mari smiles, all teeth and determination.

“Zach is mine,” she tells them as the alpha releases its hold. She straddles him, buttoning up his shirt and tucking it in, symbolically armoring his vitals. Then she leans in, laying her teeth over the throb of his jugular and biting down until he groans, head thrown back in pleasure and submission, both. She sucks, hard, leaving the imprint of her teeth wide and high above the stiff collar that she then buttons closed. She leans back, one hand on Zach’s chest as she holds the other out to the Pack.

“Zach is mine as you are mine and I am yours. We are one.” The alpha stares up at her and offers its throat. She looks at and leans in, taking its throat in her teeth, biting gently and then releasing.   “Mine.”

The word vibrates in the air as the Pack comes forward, one after the other, Mari’s teeth burning small, stable ovoids of white into the improbable angles and fractals of their skin. Each then sits for a moment, staring at her lover, neither one submitting to the other. When she’s done, they fade into the white-violet mists, accomplishment and satisfaction reverberating the wall between worlds.

Zach pushes himself up, looping his arms around her waist, so they sit belly to belly, literally watching one another’s backs.

“Yours,” he sighs into her hair, “Always yours.”

Maribelle catches his lips, chaste and tender. “Zach. Close your eyes and see.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then, listen.” She brushes her lips against the vibrant bruise above his collar. “Sentinels don’t need their eyes to see. They don’t need their ears to hear. Close your eyes, Zach. Close your eyes and _see._ ”

She takes his mouth before he can respond, letting her eyes slide closed in visceral physical pleasure, watching with her inner eye as Zach’s physical eyes closed, and then the metaphysical ones opened. She felt him as his awareness stretched out, brushing gently through her body, shuddering faintly as he cast a net around her, delicate as spiderweb. Then he touches _her_ , the blazing light at the core of her _self_ , the creature made of light and music that dwells in a crude housing of flesh, and Maribelle convulses, spirit and body both, dropping into the real world like a stone.

“Fuck,” Maribelle gasps.

“No,” says Zach. “I’m really not in the mood. Next time, warn a man. I think you bit me.”

She brushes a thumb over his lip. “No broken skin, don’t be a baby.”

Being up close and personal with that reproachful gaze is more than she can take.

“I didn’t know that would happen! I’ve only ever known one other person who could do that. Maybe. It’s not clear, since the hounds killed him.”

He stares at her like she’s crazy. She stares back like sanity is grossly overrated.

“So you’re saying _they_ can leave corpses on your doorstep and call it a present, and it’s okay.” He pushes her off his lap and stands up, putting his hands on his hips. “That strikes me as rather unfair. _They_ aren’t cats either.”

“I love you, Zacharias Whateley,” Maribelle says, rising to her feet. “But dead bodies are not presents. Don’t leave them on my doorstep.”

He blinks, mouth opening and closing like oxygen’s an optional component for his personal airspace and she gets an instant replay of her words and winces. 24 hours is probably a little soon to start declaring eternal devotion, but she’s already told a small army of extradimensional beings that Zach is _hers_ so it’s not really a stretch. Zach finally manages to take a breath and stares soulfully into her eyes.

“Can I leave them on other people’s doorsteps? People you don’t like?”

Dismembered bodies on the doorsteps of high-ranking Institute officials and members of Congress has a certain, tingling appeal, but Zach in prison or back in the hands of the Institute is a terrifying no-go.

“Since I would have to slaughter my way through armies to get you back: No.” She smiles, places a peck on his lips. “I appreciate the sentiment, though.”

“How about flowers?”

“Trite.”

“Chocolate?”

“Closer.”

“Helping you plan your next guerilla strike against the Institute?”

“That sounds like a winner.”

“The couple that slays together stays together?”

Maribelle opens her mouth to object, because he’s _hers_ and he’s not going anywhere, _ever_ , and that level of obsession is not healthy, she should probably see a psych, if it wouldn’t result in being Institutionalized, when she realizes that half of the heavy pounding she’s been hearing isn’t the rain.

It’s the front door.

She wants to kick herself. When she opened up her senses to share herself with Zach, she’d pulled back the fine web she’d woven through the valley and down toward the town. She should have re-set it when she’d awakened, but it had been nice to limit herself to the cabin and to Zach himself.

The thunder, which she’s been barely aware of, booms above them, light flashing outside the windows.

“O-open up,” shouts a muffled voice. “I-i-in the na-name of S-s-sentinel Institute and the U-united States Gov-government, I or-order you t-to open this god-goddamn door.”

Maribelle closes her eyes, letting her awareness drift outside. The woman from last night, the one who had been with the Sentinels, stands bloodstained and bedraggled in the small shelter that the door gives her. There’s no vehicle, which puzzles Maribelle for a moment, before she casts out, finding the old sedan the ‘family’ had driven bogged down in a mudhole further down the road.

She’s tempted to let the woman drown in the rain, but there’s another beat, a syncopation with the rolling, booming thunder. There’s a swirling, rotting darkness up the hill, darker than the void and far more terrifying. The woman raises her hand to hammer on the door again and Maribelle opens it, letting the interloper fall onto the floor.

“You should have called ahead,” says Zach. “We would have prepared refreshments.”

His hand keeps clenching, like there should be something in it and Mari sympathizes, although there’s clearly no need – someone has already made a fair job of trying to gut their guest

“Sentinels,” the woman tries to push herself up, but it’s got to be difficult when it looks like she’s holding her intestines in by sheer dint of will. “You’re sentinels, right?”

Maribelle says nothing, simply watches the soon-to-be pile of meat and offal as it scratches on the floor.

“Where are your charge, _Leash_?” Zach’s voice is cold and clinical. “You should be with your charge.”

“They took, they took… in the da- aark. Came, took h-him. Husband. Took him a-away.”

“Useless,” says Zach, prodding her with his toe. “Who took him?”

“F-Find him. Sentinel. My hu-husband, th-the people.” The woman chokes, gasping. “W204. I-in the Name of the Institute. You mus—You _must_ obey.”

Maribelle hisses, watching as Zach goes still, eyes blank and staring. The light that has shone so brightly gutters for a moment, draining and dimming. Rage blooms, hot and eager in Maribelle’s chest.

“No, Zach. _You are mine.”_ Her voice, near-silent, still roars above the thunder, and Zach blinks, soul flaring bright, ashy darkness burning away.

“You need help?” Mari asks, shedding away layer after layer of false fronts, false identies. Every lie she’s told herself, every control she’s held to, burns away in the force of her rage. She crouches down, grabbing the woman by her clothes and _lifting,_ using her legs as a spring to launch them both out of the door. “Pro-tip, carrion: Never try to take what’s mine.”

Mari shoves her hands through bloody, torn flesh and grips tight, hauling ripped, slippery intestines from the scant protection of the woman’s body. The woman screams, high pitched and wailing as her insides become her outsides in the dark and pouring rain. Mari grips her throat, squeezing hard with gore-slick fingers, smiling down into terrified eyes as the woman chokes and gasps, laboring hard to find oxygen.

“Shhhh, carrion. Shhhhh. You want us to search, you’ll answer my questions.” Mists rise around her, the Hounds leaning hard against the wall between worlds. “Answer and I’ll find your stray dog, _leash_. Answer and I’ll find him. I’ll find him and I’ll free him, and then we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

“No,” the woman’s gasp is soft. “No, h-he’s mine. Please. Please.”

“Yours? Married – you say? How long did it take you to turn him in, little _leash_?” The woman gasps, mouth filling with rainwater. Mari twists her head to the side, violently spilling it out. “Oh, no, leash, you may be carrion, but you don’t die. Not yet. You gave him to the institute, _didn’t you_?”

“B-better for them. B-be-better for _you._ ” The leash writhes in the mud. “Better for e-ev-everyone.”

“Wrong answer,” says Zach from behind Mari, black-blade in one hand and her pack over one shoulder. His head tilts, eyes closing as he listens. One after another, the hounds push through.

“Such a very wrong answer,” Mari agrees.

The alpha cocks its head. _Hunt?_

She can feel the word in her bones, a yearning ache in her belly, her soul. Somewhere atop the hill, she can hear screaming, soulless impassivity broken by pain.

 _Hunt,_ pants the alpha. And Mari smiles. One of the Pack trots over, running screaming fractals through the woman’s chest, razor sharp shards of darkness dripping through skin, and leaving oozing, smoking sores. Two smaller Hounds join it, purring with delight as the woman keens. Mari brushes a gentle hand down their backs. Then she stands, and Zach pulls her in, mouth frantic and desperate on hers.

“For the record?” he murmurs into her ear. “You can leave a body on my doorstep any time.”

“A good thing, too,” she lifts gore-stained hands to caress his face, smiling as he turns his head to suck her fingers clean of blood. “They’ll feed for days before she dies, if they’re careful.”

“Yours,” he says, shuddering against her, tight and wanting.

“Mine,” she agrees. “The dark is waiting, Zach. It’s time to hunt.”

Mari runs, connecting to the land as she goes, letting the earth tell her where she must leap, and the air to tell her where she must duck. Zach is close behind, heart-rate elevated. She can smell the rage, even through the rain. The Alpha bays, a joyous and terrifying howl that echoes deeply through the trees, and the pack responds in a belling roil that overwhelms the thunder. The sky is barely visible overhead, so thick are the trees, but the rain still pounds down, relentless.

Mari doesn’t care. She can feel something up ahead, something dark and terrible, and her heart beats with fierce joy to face it.

They run. She’s not sure for how long – long enough that her thighs ache and her feet and hands feel ripped to shreds by the rocks and brush, but there, up ahead, she can see torches sputtering fitfully in the deluge. Drums pound, a menacing staccato that throbs in time to the crash of thunder and the flare of lightning. Mari looks up, and is not surprised to find grotty, malevolent darkness filling the sky.

It’s like her dream, a darkness that can devour the universe whole, and she screams.

“There!” Zach shouts in her ear. “The altar.”

She can see it, surrounded by raised obelisks of a stone _she_ doesn’t recognize, but the pulsing shards nestled in her soul do. Glistening remnants of an unmade world ooze with their own, pustulent light, and Mari snarls. Corrupted shards of crystal spires – they should shine brighter than any star. She frowns at the altar, age-worn granite, stained dark with blood. The sentinel kneels upon it, arms flung wide and held aloft by thick ropes of cabled steel. Screams tear from his throat, high pitched and terrified, as he stares up into the dark abyss that seeks to devour everything whole.

That seeks to devour him, and the small shard of an unmade world he carried within him.

Eyes turn and she can feel it – the malevolent red heartbeat that had echoed beneath her feet in Whippoorwill’s Landing. Mr. Lee was there, in strange, twisted panoply. His daughter stood beside him, blank-eyed and vacant, but for the dreadful hunger that curved her lips in a crimson slash.

Mari felt her lips curl in an answering grin.

The woman from the Motel stepped forward, fishbelly lips moving in an unbearable chant, and Mari _laughs._ The woman doesn’t understand what Mari is.

Mari is a Sentinel, born of a universe shattered before time.

 _She_ is the hunter of the darkness. _She_ is the killer that lurks in the light.

She is the _hunt._ She is the _kill._

“Take them all,” she says, and the Hounds surge forward.

-0-

In the end, the worst part is reporting it to the police. They don’t even question why she and Zach have blood spattered clothes, not when she calls in a report regarding the eviscerated and animal-chewed Leash.

“We did our best,” she tells them, eyes wide and full of tears, “but… the cabin is so far out of town.”

“There, there, little miss,” says the Sheriff, “these things sometimes happen. Strangers come and the… things, in the forest, they ain’t always too kind to strangers.”

She wonders what their reaction is going to be to what seemed like half the townsfolk going missing, dragged back with the Hounds, leaving little but blood and scuff-marks behind. The altar and corrupted crystal were shattered, and the foul darkness they summoned fading as though it had never been.

“Does that mean we’re in danger, too?” asks Zach, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close as if to comfort and protect her.

“Doubt it,” says the Sheriff. “That there girl is a Whitmore, even with the foreign blood. She’s got them sharp eyes of every Whitmore ever born.” He looks closely at Zach. “An’ bless my soul if you ain’t a Whateley, yourself son. You got that look, the _knowin’_ , kind. If you stay, there ain’t much in these hills that’d harm you, or find its way into town.”

The Sheriff tips his hat and that’s… it.

They spend the next few weeks pretending to be new lovers, thrown together by the strange and frightening circumstance. The townsfolk of Whippoorwill’s Landing remain standoffish, but the strange malevolence fades to the merest whisper, and the old church glares out over the green, vacant and empty. There’s gossip of course – but it’s almost friendly. More than once Mari hears the words ‘guardians of the hill’ when she and Zach pass by.

The Star of Wisdom manages to open its doors, under new management by a local couple – townsfolk who’d left as kids, returning home from time abroad. It’s strange, Mari thinks, as she and Zach walk through town, fingers linked. It’s almost as though for every person who died on the hill, there was a former resident waiting to come home.

Waiting for it to be safe.

There’s still a malevolence up on the hill, Mari knows. There’s still a red, pulsing heart of darkness somewhere in town. She can feel them when she extends her senses, when she and Zach join together to extend their influence, but the land feels less sick than it did when she came.

Mari ventures down into the library hidden under the cabin, finding it filled with books and disks. Generations of knowledge have been stored here.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Zach asks her as she sits down at a table, a small, leather-bound notebook in her hands.

Mari nods, latex-bound fingers brushing the small lock holding it closed.

_Ars Venatorum_

_~_

_translation Alfred P. Whitemore_

_Dedicated to all Goddesses of the Hunt_


End file.
